Friday, October 26, 2007

Hillary gets nasty against Obama

Hillary Clinton has gotten nasty against fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a dispute over her vote to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

A condescending Clinton campaign e-mail belittled Obama, saying, “Stagnant in the polls and struggling to revive his once-buoyant campaign, Senator Obama has abandoned the politics of hope and embarked on a journey in search of a campaign issue to use against Senator Clinton."

The release accused Obama of making "false charges" about her vote. Critics of Clinton's Iran vote, including Obama, had charged that the resolution designating the Republican Guard as a terrorist group authorizes President Bush to take military action against Iran.

Addressing that charge, the campaign release stated, “If Senator Obama really believed this measure gave the President a blank check for war, shouldn’t he have been in the Senate on the day of the vote, speaking out, and fighting against it? Instead he did nothing, remained totally silent, skipped the vote and spoke out only after the vote to engage in false attacks against Senator Clinton.” The release inferred Obama is a hypocrite, noting, “Never mind that he made the very argument he is now criticizing back in November 2006. Never mind that he co-sponsored a bill designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a global terrorist group back in April.”

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded, “All of the political explanations and contortions in the world aren’t going to change the fact that, once again, Senator Clinton supported giving President Bush both the benefit of the doubt and a blank check on a critical foreign policy issue."

With Clinton opening up a huge lead over Obama in polls, both nationally and in early caucus and primary states, she is now the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee. However, this bitter interchange makes a Clinton-Obama dream ticket more and more unlikely.

The nasty, overly ballistic reaction of a frontrunner with such a comfortable lead also reflects poorly on how the public will perceive her ability to handle foreign policy crises if elected president. Will she have an itchy trigger finger on the nuclear button?